Chapter One
Margo
The low hum of my dying refrigerator was the only thing I could hear.
I didn’t know what time it was.
I just knew I was late for work and Cardinal, a.k.a. Carrie, would be texting me soon, checking in. She never failed to check in. Even when I didn’t want to talk or be around people. She always checked in. In a gentle way. Never demanding. Never overbearing. Just Cardinal.
I shifted my weight from my left foot to my right.
It was the fifth time I’d done that.
Right now, time was a meaningless construct.
My violet cotton bed sheets were rumpled and twisted.
Everything was out of place. My fox pillow, one of my favorite thrift finds to date, something I always set on the chair at my desk before bed, was on the floor.
My knitted comforter, another thrift, was on the floor at the end of my bed in a heap, as if someone had pushed it off with their feet.
My pillows were in disarray, and there was a man-sized dip on the right side of my bed—a side I never slept on.
Swallowing the glass in my throat, I dared to look down at my naked body for the third time. My breasts, heavy and uneven, were hanging as they always did, but on the left one, there was a small bruise around my nipple. From sucking and nibbling.
He’d done that a lot. Couldn’t get enough, in fact.
The memory of his low, hungry growl flooded me then, sending a wave of goose bumps down my arms. I shivered, pulled my focus from my soft stomach, and wrapped my arms around myself.
My eyes went right back to that spot on the bed, the place where he passed out, holding me as if I was the most precious thing in the world.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He blinked and stared at me. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting to see me here at Astoria’s watering hole for the depressed and washed up: The Buoy. “It’s good to see you. Are you doing okay?”
My eyes drifted from the indention on the mattress to the one in the pillow.
My room—my entire shitty little apartment—reeked of him.
His expensive cologne and the rum he’d been consuming at a feverish rate last night.
My curtains shifted by my large window—the only reason I tolerated living in this box.
It stretched from my room into the living room.
A rare luxury for a girl like me. In the distance, a barge sounded its horn, announcing its arrival to the Columbia River as the morning breeze flowed into my space.
As the salt air filled my nostrils, the damning realization that my space was no longer my own settled on my shoulders.
He’d been here.
I brought him here.
I let him in.
I gave him my body.
And it still wasn’t enough.
My eyes began to sting, and I let my head fall back.
My long, pin-straight hair fell over my shoulder, the ends tickling the small of my back.
I inhaled a deep breath, holding it as the first tear fell.
Then the second and third. Within moments, I was silently crying, and as much as I wanted to brush this off or shove it down, I knew it wouldn’t do any good.
Bottling things up never did me any good.
My life and the shit I was still dealing with at twenty-nine years old were a testimony of that.
So I let the tears fall onto my cheeks, running down my face, my neck, and all the way down to my chest, where they eventually dried out over my heart.
My phone dinged on the nightstand.
Cardinal.
I was supposed to clock in at Rossy’s thirty minutes ago.
As I carefully released the air in my lungs, the kitchen phone started ringing.
That would be Rossy, the owner of Rossy’s Books.
I wouldn’t call him my boss. Sarah ran the shop for him.
Sarah was my boss. Rossy was just…well, Rossy, a widowed middle-aged British man who dressed like Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was currently working on his high-fantasy novel.
He was also the only human being on the planet who had the number to my kitchen phone.
On the third ring, I moved. As my feet carried me down the hall, across the small living space and into the kitchen that would put low-rent New York City apartments to shame, I ignored the fact that the leather jacket he’d thrown on the back of my lime green couch was now gone.
I pulled the phone off the receiver mounted on the wall. “Hello, Rossy,” I greeted, my voice monotone.
“Are you okay?” he rushed out in a panic. “Carrie cannot get a hold of you and Sarah is seconds away from going to hunt you down.”
I turned my head, staring at the dishes in my sink. “Yes, I’m fine. I just slept in, is all.”
“Yes, well, I tried to tell the girls you have been a little overbooked with mid-terms.”
I hummed, not confirming or denying.
My last mid-term wasn’t until Friday, and I was more than prepared for it.
I’d been studying for weeks. Then, the week after that, I had a meeting with my adviser.
We were going to plan out my final semester of college and then set a graduation date.
I was just a few credits away from having a bachelor’s degree in business.
I had no idea what I wanted to do, but at least having a degree would allow me to feel some sense of value.
“Are you all right to come in for your shift?” Rossy gently asked.
Honestly, he didn’t care if I missed a day or two. Before I started school, he would make me take days off, which sucked. Back then, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“Yes,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Okay, darling,” he replied, sounding relieved. “I’ll inform the others.”
“Sounds good, boss man.”
I didn’t give him a chance to respond before I hung the phone back on the receiver, enjoying the nostalgic sound of it. It gave me a sense of comfort I couldn’t explain.
“And the world kept spinning,” I murmured, pulling my hair over my shoulder, braiding it. I was halfway through the braid when I entered my living room and stopped dead, staring at my couch.
Though his jacket was gone, my pile of towels, which had taken up residence on the left side of my couch for at least a week, had all been folded.
Each one was stacked on top of the other, neat and tight, folded so perfectly that they looked like something out of a magazine.
A perfect prop to manifest the perfect lie.
“So Top Gun can fuck me, sleep in my bed, and fold my towels,” I scoffed, anger sparking inside my chest, “but he can’t leave a note?”
I marched over to the towels and yanked the stack off the couch with a scream, scattering them all over my wooden floor. My chest heaved as I stood over them, his ruined perfection, a shattered illusion.
“Hayes Mitchell is a fucking asshole,” I declared to my empty home.
Then I padded into my bedroom as I wiped my tears away to get ready for work.
****
“Here’s your lavender latte, Cardinal,” I called before turning back to the espresso machine, prepping the next order.
“Thanks, Margo,” she chirped happily as I locked in the portafilter.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her snow-blond curls bouncing as she made her way to the counter.
Instead of grabbing the to-go cup and walking away like I needed her to, she did the opposite.
The one thing I’d been dreading since I arrived nearly five hours ago: she perched herself on one of the stools, settling in for conversation.
“How are mid-terms going?” she asked, taking a sip.
I pressed the brew button on the machine, grabbed my hand towel from my shoulder, and waited for her to moan at the taste of my latte.
She did, her eyes closing before she sighed with bliss. “God, that’s good.”
“Cardinal, you have three of them a day,” I deadpanned. “And every time you act like it’s your first time tasting it.”
I still remember when she wandered into Rossy’s two years ago, wearing her bright red St. Louis Cardinals hoodie.
She’d been in trouble then, running from her past. Still, she put on a brave face with me, and when I gave her that very first lavender latte, I watched as she stared at the foam art I’d done like it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Then she’d taken her first sip, and it was all over there.
“Because it’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted, hands down,” she laughed. “But don’t tell Jake that. He’ll get offended.”
I stiffened at the mention of one of the Red Snake boys.
Cardinal’s fiancé, Grayson, was the owner of Red Snake Investigations, where Jake, the resident computer hacker genius, worked.
It was also where Hayes worked. Actually, he was second in command over there.
Grayson’s right hand. Which made having a one-night stand with him all the more complicated.
I added this to my mental list of reasons why no one could ever know about the events that took place last night.
“Margo?”
I snapped out of it, tucked the stray hair that always managed to pop out of my braid behind my ear, and poured a fresh espresso shot into the next mug. “Right.” I cleared my throat, starting to froth the milk. “Wonder boy genius is getting into the art of being a barista. I forgot.”
“He’s trying,” she amended with a soft giggle, her diamond ring sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.
“Is there anything he can’t do?” I mumbled, just for the sake of appearances. If she caught even a whiff of my rage toward the Red Snake team, she’d pry.
I didn’t need anyone to pry, least of all her. Because with her, after everything we’d been through together, I would tell her the truth.
“Ash said that Jake can’t bake bread to save his life,” Cardinal noted as I finished the next order. I turned and gave the customer a smile as I set down their coffee.
“To be fair,” the customer interjected, “bread is very hard to master. If you don’t get the yeast just right, it’ll be a disaster.”
Carrie grinned at the man. “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”